Billing overview - STAROps - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

This topic describes the billing methods and pricing of STAROps to help you quickly understand how STAROps is billed. STAROps bills AI credit consumption and the digital employee duty service fee separately. AI credits are consumed when intelligent O&M tasks are run, and the duty service fee is incurred after a custom digital employee is created. AI credit consumption can be billed on a pay-as-you-go basis or offset by resource plans. The digital employee duty service fee is billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Billing items and pricing

Billing item	Unit	Pay-as-you-go unit price	Billing rule
AI credit consumption (AI_Credit)	Credit	USD 0.0016 per credit	Metered based on the AI credits that tasks actually consume. The credits that remain after free credits and resource plan offsets are deducted are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Digital employee duty service fee (Agent_Day)	Digital employee × calendar day	USD 3 per digital employee per calendar day	Duty service days are counted separately for each custom digital employee, and the days of multiple digital employees are added up. A period of less than one day is counted as one day.

The intelligent O&M assistant (Ops Agent) provided by STAROps is not charged the digital employee duty service fee.

The digital employee duty service fee and the AI credits consumed by tasks are billed separately. AI credits consumed by tasks that digital employees run are still billed based on the existing credit rules. For detailed calculation rules and examples, see Pay-as-you-go billing. Yunxiao AI Assistant does not share either type of quota.

Billing scope

AI credit consumption

AI credits consumed when you use STAROps intelligent O&M capabilities through the following entries are subject to the credit billing rules in this topic:

STAROps console.
CloudMonitor (CMS) console.
Simple Log Service (SLS) console, excluding SLS Data Agent.

AI credits are used to meter resource consumption in scenarios such as intelligent conversations and long-running tasks, and cannot be converted back to cash. Tasks of different complexity consume different numbers of credits. For the billing rules of other product entries, see the billing documentation of the corresponding product.

Effective August 16, 2026, Quick Investigation, Deep Investigation, and Alert Root Cause Analysis are officially billed. Using these features consumes AI credits.

Digital employee duty service fee

Effective October 10, 2026, STAROps charges a duty service fee for custom digital employees.

Billing starts after a custom digital employee is created and stops after it is deleted. A custom digital employee still incurs the duty service fee during periods when it does not run tasks.
The intelligent O&M assistant (Ops Agent) provided by STAROps is exempt from the digital employee duty service fee. AI credits consumed by tasks that you run with Ops Agent are still billed based on the existing credit rules.

Billing methods and offset rules

Pay-as-you-go is the default billing method of STAROps. AI credit resource plans can be used together with pay-as-you-go.

Dimension	Pay-as-you-go	AI credit resource plan
Applicable billing items	AI credit consumption and digital employee duty service fee	AI credit consumption
Payment method	Postpaid. Fees are calculated based on the actual billable usage.	One-time prepaid. After purchase, you obtain credits that can be used for offsets.
Activation	Active by default after STAROps is activated. The duty service fee is incurred after a custom digital employee is created.	Active immediately after purchase
Validity period	No expiration	Based on the validity period that you select at the time of purchase. Unused credits are cleared after expiration.
Stacking	After free credits and resource plan credits are exhausted or expired, subsequent credit consumption is automatically billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.	You can purchase multiple resource plans. The plan closest to expiration is used first.

AI credits are offset in the following order:

New customer credits.
Monthly free quota.
AI credit resource plans. When multiple resource plans exist, the plan closest to expiration is used first.
Pay-as-you-go. The remaining credits are billed at USD 0.0016 per credit.

New customer credits, the monthly free quota, and AI credit resource plans can offset only AI credit consumption, not the digital employee duty service fee. AI credit resource plans also cannot be used for other cloud products.

Purchase resource plans

You can purchase AI credit resource plans on the STAROps Common Buy page.

Use the Alibaba Cloud account or RAM user to which the STAROps service belongs to perform order operations. We recommend that you use an Alibaba Cloud account to place orders. If you use a RAM user to place orders, the RAM user must have the following permissions:

AliyunBSSOrderAccess: Permission to pay for orders.
AliyunCMSFullAccess or a custom STAROps permission policy: Permission to operate STAROps services.

Free quota

STAROps provides the following free credit benefits:

Type	Eligibility	Free quota	Validity period	Upon expiration
New customer credits	Alibaba Cloud accounts that have not claimed STAROps new customer credits	10,000 credits (one-time)	31 days from activation	Unused credits are cleared
Monthly free quota	All customers who have activated STAROps	2,500 credits per month	Resets automatically each month	Unused credits in the current month are not carried over to the next month

The preceding benefits can offset the credits consumed through the entries within the scope of AI credit consumption in this topic. Yunxiao AI Assistant does not share either type of quota. AI credit consumption within the offset scope of the quotas does not incur pay-as-you-go fees. The duty service fee of custom digital employees is still billed separately.

Fee queries and related documents

AI credit usage: Log on to the STAROps console to view credit usage details.
Bills: Log on to the Alibaba Cloud Expense Center to view the bill details and deduction records of AI credit consumption and the digital employee duty service fee.
Billing rules and examples: See Pay-as-you-go billing.
Credit consumption control: See Quota management. The monthly credit limit is used to control credit consumption. The duty service fee of custom digital employees is calculated based on the billable days from creation to deletion.
Resource plan expiration and overdue payment handling: See Resource plan expiration and overdue payments.

What happens after credits are exhausted

After the new customer credits, monthly free quota, and resource plans in your account are all exhausted or expired, STAROps remains available and is not interrupted due to credit exhaustion. Subsequent credit consumption is automatically billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.